


Cryogenic Sleeping Beauty

by Gloomier



Series: Tea's Fic Funbox [2]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Hobbit Meets Fallout, the fallout au no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 17:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11294892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gloomier/pseuds/Gloomier
Summary: The one thing Thorin hated more than vault delving was Gandalf asking him to pillage a vault. Nothing good ever comes from those centuries-old, steel tombs.Except this time.





	Cryogenic Sleeping Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I might need to revisit this au, it gives me feels still (and all the potential pairings!). Ficlet originally posted on my tumblr.
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://tea-blitz.tumblr.com/)

“Hurry up and get that damn door open, Dwalin!” Thorin growls quietly over his shoulder. They’re in a bad position, and it would only take a few ghouls running down the corridor to pin them down; they were too exposed and had no accessible exit.

“The door is busted,” Dwalin grunts, straining to pry the sliding door open with his hands. “The damn computer is useless. We need to find another way around.” 

“Fine, let’s go. No telling if there are more of those ferals around.”  _ God forbid we run into a glowing one down here, running this stupid errand for Gandalf, _ Thorin complains silently. It’s a legitimate concern in the vaults; the first one Thorin ever stepped foot into he had encountered a glowing one, and he would love to avoid repeating  _ that _ experience.

He and Dwalin backtrack down the deathtrap corridor and around the corner to an intersection with a hall they left untouched. They slowly comb their way through the new area, checking each room thoroughly before moving on; they take the useful items that they can carry which amounts to a couple aluminum cans, some circuitry, and dirty water. There is a lot of wear and tear from the passage of time, but it seems a lot of the damage caused throughout the vault was due to fighting, Thorin had surmised; it was not an uncommon sight, he saw it in other vaults as well, though the destruction varied. 

The vaults never failed to churn his gut.

There were countless skeletons: in corridors, sleeping quarters, the kitchen and other public areas; the smaller ones never failed to make his eyes itch with tears. The few terminals he had accessed were heartbreaking; those who weren’t slaughtered out in the open had eventually succumbed behind the thick, steel doors that protected them. Whoever remained after that, if any, had died by radiation. A terminal revealed that one of the surviving security guards reported that there had been a breach in vault containment. 

Beyond a tragic end, the tomb had gone untouched for two-hundred years.

Eventually the pair reach the Overseer’s office. There are a few more skeletons strewn about here too; a few are clothed in ratty security guard uniforms, and a single skeleton wearing pre-war clothing and a filthy lab coat . Dwalin slips over to the Overseer’s terminal and begins hastily punching at the keys.

“Are you in?” Thorin asks impatiently, taking up position by the door with his plasma rifle while his partner works. 

“Aye, looks like we can get in this way,” Dwalin replies with a lopsided grin as his fingers continue to tap away fiercely.

After a few minutes the hydraulics whine as the computer panel behind Dwalin pops back a few inches, then slides up and away revealing a hidden sets of stairs going down. 

“Good work, let’s hurry it up. I’m sure whatever else is lurking down here heard that noise.” Thorin says as he strides to the newly opened stairwell, giving Dwalin’s arm a squeeze for a job well done as he passes by.

The descent is unexpectedly long but goes quick and quiet, and Thorin appreciates that there are no ghouls screeching and falling down the stairs after them. At the end of a long corridor, they find themselves standing on the catwalk in a massive room housing, at the very least, sixty cryopods, perhaps more; there were many more than Thorin had been expecting.

“We need to find the pod. I’ll start on this end, you take the other,” Thorin nods his head toward the other side of the room once they reach the ground flood. “We don’t have much time.”

They really have no time at all considering how long it look to track down the vault with Gandalf’s poor directions and obscure landmarks, plus all the obstacles they had to skirt within the steel tomb (don’t even get him started on how close they came to being blown to smithereens by a fucking boobytrapped frag grenade; they would never breathe a word of it to anyone).

“These damn vaults give me the fuckin’ willies,” Dwalin grumbles as he adjusts his grip on his shotgun and saunters off to his side of the room, “Yell if you find something.”

Thorin sighs and starts down his first row. 

Not all of the pods are filled, Thorin discovers, but those that are draw his attention. One pod looks as though it hasn’t been functioning for a long time, its inhabitant’s skeleton is sitting awkwardly in the chair; another, a woman, who had been unknowingly sentenced to this sleeping prison, is ghostly white and covered in frost - the computer controlling her pod shows no life-sign. 

The rest of Thorin’s row is much of the same - empty or dead. 

Half-way through his third row, he finds it.

“Dwalin!” Thorin calls out, taking care not to yell too loud.

While he waits for Dwalin to catch up, Thorin takes a moment to observe the reason he and Dwalin were in this god-forsaken place. 

A man sits within the pod; his skin is white as snow with curly hair the color of copper, and he wore a set of pre-war clothes, still in pristine condition. Were it not for the computer reading the man’s life-sign, Thorin would have thought him dead like all the others. 

The ID for the pod read: Overseer, Dr. Bilbo Baggins.


End file.
